It’s the song everyone immediately thinks of, when The Weathermen are mentioned, but of course their output was more varied than this. The thing is, it’s such a catchy number that it will stick in your head for decades.
Duet Emmo was a collaboration between Daniel Miller of Mute Records and Graham Lewis and Bruce Gilbert of Dome. One of the most beautiful and haunting tracks ever made, it freezes the feeling of 1982 in 12 inches of vinyl. Lewis and Gilbert’s own post-Wire experimental work was extraordinary in its own right, but when the synthetic expertise and detuned sounds of Miller are added, the result is much more than the sum of its parts.
Formed by some young lads training for a career in kitchens or catering, and named for a device used to scientifically ration out food, Portion Control were one of the electronic world’s true originals. Here, they keep the colonels from power in what they call The Great Divide…
British Columbia’s Moev is a kind of ground zero for electronic music in Canada. While Montrealers Rational Youth were first off the mark with their all-synth album, Cold War Night Life, on the Left Coast they were working to catch up. The first Moev album, Zimmerkampf, came out in 1982, and this catchy, synth-driven ditty was the lead track. The band then spawned Nettwerk Records, home to Skinny Puppy and others.
Kord are favourites at CWNL, for the energetic, raw-synth material that keeps flowing from their machines. This track is from a compilation tape called “A Somatic Response”.
By all rights, this should be saved up to be a Rare Video of the Week, but it’s such a glorious, classic track that it needs to go up now. If the cross-over between sections is confusing, then just put on a double-breasted shirt, gel your hair and close your eyes to savour this 80s jewel.
Possibly the funniest video ever made about the music industry and EBM. Over at Radio RIX Monopol, they have some funny ideas about what people want to listen to, as Container 90 find out. There are little jokes scattered throughout this fine, home-made effort from Container 90, who also supply a driving, hard-line track to pogo to – if you can stop laughing long enough.
A new release from Sweden’s Cryo is always keenly anticipated. Martin Rudefelt’s songwriting is one of Scandinavia’s best-kept secrets, but that should change with the release of In Your Eyes. The first single from the forthcoming Retropia album, In Your Eyes comes with a club mix that is a sure-fire hit. It’s not a Rational Youth cover, but an original alternative dancefloor-filling stormer, coming on like Portion Control crossed with The KLF at Front 242’s house.
Additional mixes by Haujobb and Leaether Strip give different spins to In Your Eyes, but the real gem on this release is The Portal, a powerful track that is no filler or b-side candidate. Cryo’s songcraft is exceptional; and, if Retropia can keep up this standard, then Rudefelt and partner in crime, Torny Gottberg, can rightly claim one of the year’s great releases in a vintage year for electronic music.
William Orbit’s creative touches are all over this track from acclaimed Irish singer, Sarah McGuinness, which is taken from the soundtrack to a documentary on the British comedian, Eddie Izzard. It’s a mixing master-class by Orbit, whose bag of tricks is unmatchable.
It used to be that tape cassettes were Enemy Number One for the music industry. People in their bedrooms, armed with Maxell C-60s and collections of sacred vinyl, were accused of killing music. Then the internet came along, and it seemed quaint to think that fans making mixtapes for their ghetto blasters were somehow responsible for pulling down the world’s cultural foundations. It took the arrival of CDs to kill off the cassette format, but the advent of P2P networking and MP3 compression finished it off for good. Music was saved!
The thing about the cassette, though, is that it had a saturated sound that could be warm and attractive. You could also take it apart and manufacture home-made tape-loops, using only a pair of scissors and some glue. Presumably, the attraction of the Stockholm-based recording label, Flexiwave, to the cassette format is based on the former consideration. After all, who would want to disassemble one of their fabulous, hand-made packages to cut up a C-20 cassette featuring some of Sweden’s finest electronic acts? You wouldn’t want to take the scissors to Video Look’s Avveckling (Liquidation), with its dark, brooding electro sounds, any more than you would want to mess with the sound of Komatrohn’s Ingen som vet (Nobody Knows). Kord are one of the best examples of the new minimal wave, so being able to play Ensam och het (Alone and Hot) through Dolby Noise Control holds more attraction than simple format-nostalgia. Colouroid’s own Baklängesvärlden (Backward’s World) wouldn’t sound the same without the saturation.
Then again, the C-20 pack comes with a download code, so that those without the hardware to play tapes can still hear the songs. In that case, a home-made tape-loop can be yours, but what could you record on it that would be any cooler? You music-killer, you.